Zero Per Cent

The best place to start is on the stairs at home where we used to spend a lot of time sitting. Always the same formation, my little sister on the top one and Tommy on the second, with me down a couple and leaning against the wall. Our legs had habits too. Rosie bunched hers under her chin, Tommy’s were all over the place, never still, while mine pointed down the stairs with the right foot on top of the left trying to line itself up with the bottom of the hand rail. This is how we used to sit – for the clicking of the Christmas photograph, for the looking at ourselves in the mirror above the stairs and for the listening in on the grown-ups.

The photographs are still an easy present for Mum to give lucky friends and relations each year. We used to spend hours finessing our poses in the mirror but our ears were always on the kitchen where we might just be being talked about by Mum and Dad.

Five years ago I was the hot topic. I have been discussed a lot since but it was five years ago, when I was about to leave primary school, that I first picked up some interesting stuff.

My ‘educational destination’ was still undecided. Dad was finally losing what had been a long and cold war to send me to a private school rather than the local comprehensive. Still he refused to believe Mum would not change her mind at some point. She was furious he would not just roll over and accept her passionate belief in the importance of supporting state schools with our own flesh and blood. But even she was not as cross as Rosie and Tommy, who had nothing else to listen in on for weeks.

Dad worked very hard in a bank. He still does, in the City of London. Apparently that is the main reason we were able to afford this house, the biggest on Rockenden Road and just in either Hounslow or Isleworth depending on how you look at it. He travels all over the world so doesn’t mind being close to Heathrow. Mum has lived in the area all her life and works as a secretary at the health centre.

And how did I feel? I didn’t like the idea of leaving my mates, who were going to Chevy Oak Comprehensive. But I didn’t like the idea of disappointing Dad either when he had put me up or down or by for a school somewhere else. He kept on about the facilities and class sizes and the paintballing club they ran on Saturday afternoons. Mum seemed to have heard enough of it.

This is where we live, I heard from my stair. "It may not be particularly peaceful or lovely, Martin, but we are here in a neighbourhood – yes, neighbourhood – we know and in which we are known. And Jack, as one of our children, lives here too."

I am well aware—

The hell you are! This is not some computer package or bloody car we’re talking about here. It’s Jack’s education. You can get excited about your heated wing mirrors waggling for you at the push of a button, about your gleaming veneer and your plush velour, but Jack does not need extras. He needs the local school, solid, sane and free.

It’s got nothing to do with cars, Polly.

What are these posh schools of yours if not shiny cars with tinted windows which purr shut on the smog? You can go paintballing whenever you like but leave Jack here with us.

Very funny. A few months from now you’ll be sorry for this, Polly.

You want him schooled, Martin, and I want him educated. It’s as simple as that. Heir-conditioning with an aitch! That’s what you’re after.

Our teacher at Primary was our friend. The floor of our form room was thick with rugs and cushions. The walls were beautifully decorated by all of us. I used to think that’s why they were called primary colours. There were amazing displays by our teacher with her perfect handwriting which I longed to copy completely perfectly. How could anyone (except Razza who has always had Special Needs) hate reading in our Cosy Corner? There was so much friendship in that room we even had loads to spare for the slimy lizards in their tank. There wasn’t even a bell. Instead, at the end of break, a toddler would proudly brandish that sign, ‘Please walk in now showing care and respect to everyone in are school’.

But Dad’s descriptions of secondary classrooms, delivered in chilling detail when he tucked me in at the end of the day, reminded me of Mexican Indian arenas we’d done in comparative civilisation where they played football with prisoners’ heads and volleyball with freshly ripped-out hearts.

On his way back to the office from Moscow, he invited me out to lunch in my last primary school half-term. I went along a little nervously. We sat in the window of a posh place in Richmond and Dad, in a grand mood, ordered caviar.

I’d like to introduce you to an expensive habit of mine, he said when it arrived. Mum doesn’t like it, of course…

Caviar – or you eating it?

Either, Jack. He spooned the shiny black stuff on to some fancy toast. Would you like to try it? For each go he pouted his lips like a gibbon to make sure he didn’t drop any.

Eeeerrr! No, thanks, Dad. I gobbled at my melon.

Go on!

The caviar did look quite beautiful, like a load of full stops.

Naaah, Dad!

I won’t offer often, Jack!

So I craned forward and took a nibble from the toast he held. It tasted sensational. All my buds were up and quivering and demanding more.

Steady, said Dad, snaffling the last of it himself. But, I tell you what – last a couple of years at this comp, establish yourself as a survivor – and then I’ll stop banging on about different sorts of schools.

I’ll try, Dad.

And if you hate it after two years, we’ll try somewhere else. Either way we’ll celebrate with some more of this black stuff!

When his phone rang all this rare enjoyment drained from his face. He said he had been summoned. I said I’d take the bus, expecting him to tell me I was too young and that he would give me a lift. But he didn’t seem to know I was too young, so I did it. No bother.

My mates Michael, Razza and a few others who had come up to Chevy Oak together were sitting on some steps in the playground, fresh young bums on worn-out bricks, discussing the planes which were even louder and lower here than at Primary. One of Heathrow’s smaller runways was actually visible, its huge grass safety zone separated from our playground by a high wire fence.

Razza started cussing another kid, just having a little laugh, casting around to see who couldn’t take it, eventually suggesting that this boy’s mum had shagged a camel. I was wondering why dads never got cussed when Michael stole Razza’s line.

And the camel died of shame.

The kid was blasted away by our laughter straight into Mr Ronaldson, our form tutor. He looked at us each in turn and then pointed to some letters engraved on the vertical of the step beside me.

See what that says, lads?

I could make out the name ‘Dennis’ and, also, ‘wanks’.

The longest piece of writing Denny did during his five years here, Ronaldson went on. Do you know what he used to do in lessons?

No, sir.

He used to giggle, Jack. At first the kids laughed with him, but soon they got bored of Denny and began to ignore him. He began giggling louder, every term louder and louder. But do you know what? He left without a single GCSE. He looked at each of us again. Remember Denny, won’t you?

Yes, sir, we said and I shifted uncomfortably to cover the name and the verb.

He’s only me uncle, said Michael, suddenly.

Ronaldson wasn’t thrown. Well, you ask him about his time here, Michael. See if he hasn’t got any tips for you.

He had a laugh, though, said Michael. A plane was overhead. Denny had a good time, he did.

Ronaldson had moved away but he turned and looked steadily at Michael, who tried to keep chuckling. Isn’t laughing now, is he, Michael?

Although I had no plans to giggle my way through the curriculum, I was not so interested in the classroom. I needed to show Dad I could hack the other parts: the corridors, the landings and the playground. I had no fear of being a loser on the Denny scale. But in what way was I going to be a winner? Certainly not by sitting on these steps waiting to be kicked. My parents’ voices were still loud in my head despite the planes.

He’s a sensitive kid.

It’s a sensitive school.

We should be exercising our right – our ability – to choose the best school for him.

"We are. This is the best school, Martin."

There were groups of older boys before me now, too cool to move. They didn’t even bother trying to impress the girls in their cropped uniforms, skirts rolled up to the hilt, who coped just as coolly with the disappointment. Softer-looking kids hunkered down in corners and took it out on small insects and old birds while groups of little girls promenaded the perimeter, shouting, pouting, spouting.

But this playground was really about boys chasing footballs, knees punching the air violently, feet slapping on the tarmac. There was so much shouting of the one word Fuck! in so many different forms and tones that it was almost a one-word language. Most of all, there was so much fucking football.

As another plane came over we saw a massive shot beat a goalkeeper and then whack a tiny Year Seven, the camel-shagger’s son, on the rebound. We could see his soundless shriek but none of us moved. There were so many other games going on that people were being taken out all the time, so many bursts of speed and screeching halts. A boy pulled up his shirt after scoring and did a flip in front of jeering girls. We still had seven minutes to survive and my cherry drink was backing up on me. This was no place to relax but still there seemed no way off the step.

Two more huge people chasing a ball clashed heads right by us.

Fucking tosser.

Fuck, man!

They squared up to each other but decided they had each kept enough respect so they shoulder-barged each other and parted with a friendly Fuck you!

Fuck that must of hurt, whispered Razza with admiration, smacking his own head.

Like fuck. Michael was lapping it up, and indicated with his head that a fellow new kid was hiding a football under his jacket. With three minutes of break to go he grabbed it off him and they all stood up to try and play in a little space near the steps.

Come on, Jack, mate!

Hating fucking football, I stood reluctantly. It was a way off the steps but I felt like a shaky lamb out for the first gambol. When the ball came to me it passed right through my legs and into one of the huddles of seniors. It was lazily scooped up. The last moments of break were bounced away by our ball in huge hands. Then as the buzzer sounded this kid, a stubby ponytail drongo, booted it to the far end of the playground where another brute bicycle-kicked it on the volley way up over the fence into airport territory.

Cheers, Jack, said Michael. As if it was his ball anyway. Stacey Timms and her little posse, who’d come up from our Primary at the same time, called me a prat in passing. The ball’s owner looked at me miserably. I looked back as the playground emptied. Gulls wheeled down to feast on our litter and I realised I hadn’t eaten the cheesy strings Mum had packed for me. Tears queued in my ducts but somehow I blocked them out.

From here we went into whole school assembly – my first visit to this hall in which I am sitting now – to be addressed by Bumcheeks, the headteacher.

As you know, he began after many minutes of staff shushing, Chevy Oak is one of the most popular schools in the borough and I would like to start this morning – this academic year – by simply congratulating you on being here.

Older kids back-slapped each other facetiously.

Our greatly improved set of results last year is still more evidence of a school on the move, a school aiming high, a school marching forward with confidence.

At which point everyone began stamping in time, which caused Bumcheeks to turn bright red and pause a while.

There are, it must be said, more of you than ever before. We are jam-packed in here, jam-packed in our very narrow corridors and in the playground even more jam-packed since the marvellous new block has gone up. We cannot reduce your size because, boys and girls, you have a habit of growing like aubergines. From now on, as you will have noticed from the new signs, you will keep left in the corridors and observe the new queuing system at lunch. But the main measure I wish to introduce – from tomorrow – has just been further justified by yet another nasty incident in the playground, a Year Seven boy hit in the face by a—

The chortling briefly drowned him.

Listen! Hit in the face by a football. Therefore I have decided on a measure we have long been considering – a ban on full-size footballs in the playground. From tomorrow you will only be allowed to use…

Wot? The need to listen was suddenly urgent.

I will tell you what just as soon as I get silence…

Oh WOT!

… only be allowed to use tennis balls.

The baying began in earnest.

Nah, nah, nah!

You can’t do that, Bumcheeks.

Chairs bucked noisily.

Tight, man. That’s dark.

Aiming high, I